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Extreme Makeover: Bay Street edition
Condo residents aim to bring a sense of neighbourhood -- and even beauty -- to a concrete canyon
JOHN LORINC
Special to The Globe and Mail
On a dull morning last week, May Chow, a civil servant, nursed a milky coffee in her local café and gazed out the window as her downtown neighbourhood went about its day.
Several young parents pushed baby carriages along the sidewalk. A friend walked by and blew her a kiss. Across the street, Ms. Chow noticed a man playing with his dog in a local parkette, which sits next to the lovely old yellow brick church she attends. "Sorry," she said, interrupting the interview. "I'm seeing all my friends. I can barely go anywhere around here without being recognized."
The surprising detail about this very ordinary urban tableau is that Ms. Chow's neighbourhood is Bay Street -- an address better known for its trading floors and government edifices than for the thousands of Torontonians who now call this concrete canyon home.
The canyon factor will only get worse in coming years as developers prepare to erect massive new high-rise projects north of College Street, including a trio of condo towers proposed for the St. Michael's College lands.
But Bay Street's homeowners are fighting back, pushing for the type of local improvements that are more commonly debated in neighbourhoods like Leaside, Riverdale and the Annex -- pedestrian-friendly intersections, wider sidewalks and the availability of green space. Retirees who have downsized to these downtown high-rises have been trying to bring life to Bay's denuded streetscape, planting donated flowers and shrubs, and nursing the spindly street trees inserted into the sidewalk. And residents of 11 high-rises have now banded together to form the Bay Corridor Community Association -- led by Ms. Chow, the group is challenging the city to devise a strategy for beautifying a thoroughfare that has become the spine of an urban community of at least 6,000.
Part of the BCCA's campaign is to develop a distinctive brand for the neighbourhood, to give it the kind of unique identity that other downtown areas now enjoy. But these stirrings of neighbourhood pride could be undermined by the deadening impact of a wall of new high-rises, which will add 3,700 units to the area north of College. Ms. Chow worries the buildings going up on the St. Mike's land will snuff out the views of St. Basil's Church, which sits on the edge of the site. And she's extremely concerned about a 37-storey tower slated for the little parkette at the corner of St. Joseph and Bay, where a stand of chestnut trees and a bit of grass provide residents with a respite from the ubiquitous concrete.
"Must we get rid of everything?" Ms. Chow asks, noting that access to the area's only other green space -- Queen's Park -- has always been extremely difficult because it involves traversing four lanes of heavy traffic.
In fact, the possible loss of that parkette underscores one of the shortcomings in the way the city has pursued downtown intensification. As Ms. Chow observes, council wants to promote density downtown. But the city has failed to invest in the pedestrian realm, which becomes ever more crucial as Bay Street fills up with towering condos. "Think of all the people who live here," she says. "Do they sit in their teeny condos all the time? No."
Councillor Kyle Rae (Toronto-Centre) is adamant about saving the parkette. "I've told them there is no way. It's the last piece of green space on Bay Street."
Nevertheless, city officials concede they have never bothered developing a comprehensive streetscape plan for upper Bay, despite two decades of intensive residential development.
Earlier this year, Ms. Chow and her colleagues decided to force the issue by recruiting a team of University of Toronto planning students to draw one up; the students presented their ideas recently to representatives of the community association. Their vision includes consistent street furniture, less sidewalk clutter, more greenery and distinctive signage to emphasize the area's identity.
They also proposed transforming that parkette into a focal point of upper Bay, using improved landscaping designed to connect that space visually with the street and the buildings on the east side. Ms. Chow points out that something as simple as turning the forlorn benches to face into the park would improve things in the short term.
Bay Street's problems are no mystery to some of Toronto's top urban designers, but they've never been asked to come up with ideas for improvements. "It's very basic," shrugs architect Siamak Hariri, a partner in Hariri Pontarini. "Make wide sidewalks, put in trees and plant them properly. There needs to be a coherent plan for this street."
Architect James Brown, who designed Dundas Square, goes a step further, saying the city must narrow Bay and encourage landowners to open up the ground floors of their buildings to provide more pedestrian-friendly retail space.
Eric Pedersen, Toronto's program manager for urban design, agrees that the Bay corridor would benefit from the sort of facelift that occurred on St. George Street when the city, University of Toronto and a private donor invested $5-million in an impressive landscaping strategy extending from Bloor to College. "We're not getting more parks," he says. "But we can do something with the street."
With Bloor Street poised to get a major facelift and city officials now looking at replacing the middle lane of Jarvis with a landscaped median, Mr. Pedersen says Bay Street could also be a candidate for that kind of transformation.
Defending the city's inaction, Mr. Rae says he has been waiting for years for this neighbourhood to get its act together. "The sense of community is missing."
But Ms. Chow says the residents have had a tough time overcoming the "silo effect" in a vertical neighbourhood that doesn't have so much as a community newspaper to coalesce around. Yet despite the obstacles, something is happening. The community association's increasingly outspoken membership is now peppering Mr. Rae's office with requests for benches, drinking fountains and other ordinary amenities that most low-rise neighbourhoods take for granted.
Noting how the spindly street trees invariably succumb only a few years after being planted, Ms. Chow recounts a chat with her local councillor. "Kyle Rae told me, 'May, you've got to slow down.' I said, 'Yes, but you've got to understand: We're evolving, we're growing up.' "
Extreme Makeover: Bay Street edition
Condo residents aim to bring a sense of neighbourhood -- and even beauty -- to a concrete canyon
JOHN LORINC
Special to The Globe and Mail
On a dull morning last week, May Chow, a civil servant, nursed a milky coffee in her local café and gazed out the window as her downtown neighbourhood went about its day.
Several young parents pushed baby carriages along the sidewalk. A friend walked by and blew her a kiss. Across the street, Ms. Chow noticed a man playing with his dog in a local parkette, which sits next to the lovely old yellow brick church she attends. "Sorry," she said, interrupting the interview. "I'm seeing all my friends. I can barely go anywhere around here without being recognized."
The surprising detail about this very ordinary urban tableau is that Ms. Chow's neighbourhood is Bay Street -- an address better known for its trading floors and government edifices than for the thousands of Torontonians who now call this concrete canyon home.
The canyon factor will only get worse in coming years as developers prepare to erect massive new high-rise projects north of College Street, including a trio of condo towers proposed for the St. Michael's College lands.
But Bay Street's homeowners are fighting back, pushing for the type of local improvements that are more commonly debated in neighbourhoods like Leaside, Riverdale and the Annex -- pedestrian-friendly intersections, wider sidewalks and the availability of green space. Retirees who have downsized to these downtown high-rises have been trying to bring life to Bay's denuded streetscape, planting donated flowers and shrubs, and nursing the spindly street trees inserted into the sidewalk. And residents of 11 high-rises have now banded together to form the Bay Corridor Community Association -- led by Ms. Chow, the group is challenging the city to devise a strategy for beautifying a thoroughfare that has become the spine of an urban community of at least 6,000.
Part of the BCCA's campaign is to develop a distinctive brand for the neighbourhood, to give it the kind of unique identity that other downtown areas now enjoy. But these stirrings of neighbourhood pride could be undermined by the deadening impact of a wall of new high-rises, which will add 3,700 units to the area north of College. Ms. Chow worries the buildings going up on the St. Mike's land will snuff out the views of St. Basil's Church, which sits on the edge of the site. And she's extremely concerned about a 37-storey tower slated for the little parkette at the corner of St. Joseph and Bay, where a stand of chestnut trees and a bit of grass provide residents with a respite from the ubiquitous concrete.
"Must we get rid of everything?" Ms. Chow asks, noting that access to the area's only other green space -- Queen's Park -- has always been extremely difficult because it involves traversing four lanes of heavy traffic.
In fact, the possible loss of that parkette underscores one of the shortcomings in the way the city has pursued downtown intensification. As Ms. Chow observes, council wants to promote density downtown. But the city has failed to invest in the pedestrian realm, which becomes ever more crucial as Bay Street fills up with towering condos. "Think of all the people who live here," she says. "Do they sit in their teeny condos all the time? No."
Councillor Kyle Rae (Toronto-Centre) is adamant about saving the parkette. "I've told them there is no way. It's the last piece of green space on Bay Street."
Nevertheless, city officials concede they have never bothered developing a comprehensive streetscape plan for upper Bay, despite two decades of intensive residential development.
Earlier this year, Ms. Chow and her colleagues decided to force the issue by recruiting a team of University of Toronto planning students to draw one up; the students presented their ideas recently to representatives of the community association. Their vision includes consistent street furniture, less sidewalk clutter, more greenery and distinctive signage to emphasize the area's identity.
They also proposed transforming that parkette into a focal point of upper Bay, using improved landscaping designed to connect that space visually with the street and the buildings on the east side. Ms. Chow points out that something as simple as turning the forlorn benches to face into the park would improve things in the short term.
Bay Street's problems are no mystery to some of Toronto's top urban designers, but they've never been asked to come up with ideas for improvements. "It's very basic," shrugs architect Siamak Hariri, a partner in Hariri Pontarini. "Make wide sidewalks, put in trees and plant them properly. There needs to be a coherent plan for this street."
Architect James Brown, who designed Dundas Square, goes a step further, saying the city must narrow Bay and encourage landowners to open up the ground floors of their buildings to provide more pedestrian-friendly retail space.
Eric Pedersen, Toronto's program manager for urban design, agrees that the Bay corridor would benefit from the sort of facelift that occurred on St. George Street when the city, University of Toronto and a private donor invested $5-million in an impressive landscaping strategy extending from Bloor to College. "We're not getting more parks," he says. "But we can do something with the street."
With Bloor Street poised to get a major facelift and city officials now looking at replacing the middle lane of Jarvis with a landscaped median, Mr. Pedersen says Bay Street could also be a candidate for that kind of transformation.
Defending the city's inaction, Mr. Rae says he has been waiting for years for this neighbourhood to get its act together. "The sense of community is missing."
But Ms. Chow says the residents have had a tough time overcoming the "silo effect" in a vertical neighbourhood that doesn't have so much as a community newspaper to coalesce around. Yet despite the obstacles, something is happening. The community association's increasingly outspoken membership is now peppering Mr. Rae's office with requests for benches, drinking fountains and other ordinary amenities that most low-rise neighbourhoods take for granted.
Noting how the spindly street trees invariably succumb only a few years after being planted, Ms. Chow recounts a chat with her local councillor. "Kyle Rae told me, 'May, you've got to slow down.' I said, 'Yes, but you've got to understand: We're evolving, we're growing up.' "